


In the Cards

by mific



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Curtain Fic, Fanfiction, M/M, Portals, Tarot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-18 06:41:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16989963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mific/pseuds/mific
Summary: Sometimes, you need a place that's just your own.





	In the Cards

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nic/gifts).



> Written for Yuletide 2018, for nic (jedinic). This is a slightly AU offshoot, set in Season 2 - hope you enjoy it. Huge thanks to aurilly for excellent beta feedback which considerably improved the fic - any remaining oddities are mine.

~~o0o~~

It wasn't until Eliot was stuck in Fillory again and Quentin was stuck on Earth, that Quentin realized he had feelings.

Well, he always had _feelings_ ; feelings were what he did. Often they were a pain in the ass when he was down and drowning in them, but they were always there, swirling around like an undertow. So, it wasn't just the feelings; he was used to those. It was feelings about _Eliot_.

Not surprising. They were good friends, of course, and they'd had that one night he both did and didn't like to think about, with Margo. So that had made things kind of weird, but mostly in a good way. But now it was fucked up again—the ways into Fillory were closed and no one could open them, and Quentin knew viscerally that this was unacceptable. He had to see Eliot and make sure he was safe and hadn't run into any more vengeful godlings or been married off strategically again. El would be worried about him, too, Quentin figured. Well, he was fairly sure. Mostly sure. Pretty sure Eliot had feelings of his own about Quentin. There'd been a few smoldering looks and that kiss in the Whitespire library that had left Quentin flushed and vaguely panicked, not long before Fillory was cut off.

Damn it. He needed to be back there again. Fillory was Quentin's place, well, his and Julia's, and now Eliot's and Margo's—but he'd _found_ it, he'd proved it was _real_. So Quentin had to get back there and he had to see Eliot, to find out if Eliot was as messed up about being parted as he was. That probably wasn't possible, come to think of it, but he needed to hug Eliot and press his face into Eliot's neck. Hanging out in Eliot's old wardrobe at Brakebills with his nose stuck in a shirt that hadn't been worn in months wasn't cutting it any longer. Plus, it made him feel like a sad bastard, and he'd had more than enough of that already in his life, thanks.

He'd tried everything. He'd pored over the _Fillory and Further_ books in case there was some small detail he'd missed—there wasn't—and he'd badgered Penny and Julia and everyone he could get hold of. He'd ransacked the Brakebills library and hung out in antiquarian book stores looking for a long lost magical treatise about portals, but two months went by, then three, and no dice.

In the end, he resorted to card tricks to take his mind off the ache, off the Eliot-shaped emptiness inside. That was how he found it, finally, when he got bored with his usual decks and fooled around with a set of antique tarot cards he'd gotten from a book store on East 59th street.

It was on one of the greater arcana – the Tower struck by lightning. Quentin had been cutting the cards idly when he realized he'd seen that tower in Fillory, or one very like it. He'd happened on it in the woods not far from Whitespire, ruined, with rooks nesting in the top. He set the card aside and spread out the rest of the deck. Most were just figures without enough background to be sure, but the twin towers in the Moon card also looked familiar, although they'd been in another part of Fillory altogether, from what he remembered. And that walled garden in the Sun card—it could be one of the palace courtyards; he remembered one filled with marigolds with a similar pattern in the brickwork.

Could the deck have come from Fillory and somehow ended up here? Did all tarot decks come from Fillory? Well, no, not the modern versions, obviously, and the Rider-Waite deck had been made on Earth for sure, as far as Google knew. But could the earliest versions have come from Fillory? Quentin wasted many hours on long academic articles and everything the library had on the tarot, which was mostly about divination. In the end, all he knew was that nobody knew: the tarot's origins weren't clear, so it was possible.

Quentin didn't care about divination, just about using the cards as a portal. If they'd been made in Fillory, maybe he could get them to take him back there. He wasn't a traveler like Penny, but he knew portals and how to open them.

It took him another two weeks before he reckoned he had it down. At the last minute he had second thoughts—how to get back again? He didn't want to be trapped in Fillory as well. If cards made in Fillory could take him there, maybe the reverse was true? He found a locally printed pack of ordinary playing cards, making sure they weren't made in China because getting back to New York from there would be a nightmare. They had a photo of Times Square on the backs, so that might work.

Quentin chose a quiet Saturday morning when most people were still asleep, left a note in his room, and found a clearing in the woods. He figured that would cut down the risk of interruptions and help him visualize the woods near the ruined tower in Fillory. He held the Tower card up and focused on it, said the words and twirled his fingers just so, and—

He came to in another wooded clearing, on his back in the ferns, the card fallen from his slack fingers into the grass. He picked it up carefully and slid it back into what he now thought of as the Fillory Deck, pocketing it. It was later in the day from the sun's angle slanting down through thick foliage, and the trees were older, more gnarled. Ahead of him, the ruined tower was just visible, ivy-covered, its top hidden by branches. There'd been a path around the other side, he remembered, that eventually led to the castle stables.

Quentin scrambled to his feet and started walking.

~~o0o~~

"If this is a fucking joke," Quentin heard Eliot saying angrily as he waited in an anteroom, "I'm going to have you all banished to the Great Bramble!"

It had taken a while to find a servant who remembered Quentin as one of the Children of Earth; he'd very nearly been thrown out on his ear.

Eliot swept into the room, crowned and in robes Quentin hadn't seen before, purple, with gold embroidery all over them in a repeated spiky pattern. Quentin blinked: it was the symbol for The Artist Formerly Known as Prince.

"My face is up here," Eliot said, head cocked to one side, hands on his hips.

Quentin grinned at him. "Ah, hi," he said, and fluttered his fingers at the robes. "Nice outfit."

"It's a tribute," Eliot said. "Not that my fashion-challenged sycophants would know." He glared at his entourage, then stepped forward. "Oh my god, come here!" Quentin was enveloped in the Prince-pattered robes and Eliot's arms were tight around him. "Where have you all _been_?" Eliot demanded into his hair, his voice a little shaky. "I've been bored _witless_."

"Nice to see you too, El," Quentin whispered, sucking in a noseful of Eliot's scent: velvet and salt and something spicy and floral. Eliot wasn't letting go and it got hard to catch his breath. "Just, mind my ribs, okay?"

"No, seriously, what the fuck's been going on?" Eliot said, holding Quentin at arm's length and examining him. "Also, you're much too thin."

"Yeah, I've… I've been kind of busy. Might've missed few meals," Quentin admitted. "I was, um, trying to get back here. Something messed up the usual portals—no one's been able to figure it out yet."

"Then how did you…? No, wait, not here." Eliot turned to the gaggle of hangers-on. "We'll have a private dinner in my quarters. Cold goose and some of that cheesy bread, and fruit. And a bottle of the Lorian red from the wagonload Idri gave us."

"I'm afraid there's only one bottle left, your majesty," said a courtier, looking anxious. "You said to save it for you and High Queen Margo, if you rec–"

Eliot waved a dismissive hand. "She'll understand." He turned to Quentin. "C'mon Q, we've got a lot to catch up on."

~~o0o~~

"So then the troll-things turned out to be a bunch of sweeties, despite the bad breath and appalling personal hygiene. I'm having the castle soap-makers send them a few gallons of lavender body-wash," Eliot finished. He lifted his goblet and took a long swallow of wine, then set it down and raised an eyebrow. "I can't _believe_ there's so little gossip from Earth. What aren't you telling me?"

Quentin grimaced. "I just… I'm no good at. I don't... I was busy, right? With the portal." He picked up his goblet as well, but more to have something to do with his hands. He was already feeling the wine and he'd hardly had any, but even with wine loosening his tongue he couldn't tell Eliot how much he'd missed him and how he'd worked obsessively to get back here, not just to Fillory but to Eliot. Eliot, thank god, hadn't made him talk about his feelings, but there'd been more of those heated looks, and a lot of seemingly casual touching that made Quentin's breath quicken and his heart race.

"Yes," Eliot said consideringly. "Cute idea, to use the cards, but then cards always were your thing."

Quentin thought of the dark weeks and months in the hospital and how teaching himself card tricks had, well, not kept him sane, exactly, but stopped him losing it completely. He'd probably always been helping the cards along with magic without even knowing what he was doing; that was why they'd comforted him. He made a complicated face and took a sip of wine. Eliot reached over and brushed his hair back from his face, and Quentin leaned in a little.

"What about getting back to Earth again?" Eliot asked, stretching out on his side, propped on one elbow.

"Oh, I thought, well, I hope, anyway..." Quentin fumbled the Earth pack out of his pocket. "Um, these?" He flipped them and pointed at the back. Under the photo of Times Square it said "Made in Brooklyn".

Eliot pursed his lips. "Hmmm. You think it's where they're made, or that they need to have a picture of your destination on them? Also, materializing in Times Square isn't particularly inconspicuous."

Quentin waved it away. "There'll be so many people, they'll just think I stepped out from the crowd. Or I'll, um, neuralyze them a bit."

Eliot's eyebrows rose. "You're doing amnestic spells now? The Dean's allowing students to mess around with that stuff?"

Quentin huffed. "Not, not memory-wiping like they did with Julia. Just some fuzziness. Alice showed me, back when—" He stopped, swallowed, made himself continue. "More like suggestibility, so people decide they, um, they didn't really see something. Didn't see an impossible thing."

"Handy," Eliot said, nodding. "You'll have to show me. I could do with a little mind control around here, what with the cretins I have to deal with." He heaved a sigh and picked up the New York cards. "When are you going to test it?"

Quentin shrugged. "Thought I'd better… I mean. Now? Better to know. I just—"

Eliot lifted the tray of food and set it aside, then took Quentin's goblet and his own and put them on the side table as well. "Well, if there's any chance you won't be back anytime soon, we'd better make the most of it before you go. C'mere, Q."

Quentin let himself be rolled onto his back on the enormous bed, the Prince tribute robes blanketing him. Eliot's long body felt warm and familiar and Eliot's expression looking down at him was fond. Quentin felt a sense of inevitability, of rightness. He stared up, memorizing Eliot's face. "I _am_ coming back, El."

"You'd better," Eliot said, bending to kiss him. " One for the road, right?"

~~o0o~~

Quentin materialized in Times Square late at night, which was a little unexpected, but they hadn't yet figured out the time compression ratio between the worlds. At least there'd been hardly anyone around, so he hadn't had to mind-whammy anyone. He started walking to the nearest Greyhound station, having made sure he had enough cash for a ticket back to Brakebills. Then he stopped and realized he didn't need to go there at all. He could leave from anywhere on Earth, as long as he had the Fillory Deck.

The first alley he tried had a scary homeless guy in it who bared long yellow teeth at him, but the second one was okay, just a few rats rustling in the garbage. Quentin held the Tower card up in the glow of a Chinese restaurant's flickering sign, stared at it, and gestured.

It was dusk in the trees by the crumbling tower and this time he didn't pass out, just staggered a little. He hadn't passed out in Times Square either, now he thought of it, which was just as well. He must be getting better at this.

"Um, El?"

" _There_ you are," Eliot said, striding around the side of the ruin. "Come on, I brought a carriage. It's getting late."

"How long were you…?"

"Three goddamn hours playing some kind of dice game with the coachman—a complete con-man, I might add—so as not to expire of ennui. I lost all the buttons off my coat to him and if you hadn't turned up now I'd probably have wagered away the crown jewels." Eliot herded Quentin into the coach and they began lurching down the rutted track.

"You think it's a 10:180 time compression?" Quentin asked, as Eliot wrapped them both in a blanket. He pulled it around him, leaning into Eliot's warmth. "But other times when we used different portals, I didn't notice any-"

"Q, this is _Fillory_. The laws of physics don't exactly apply. Any time difference probably changes at whim."

"Yeah, but _whose_ whim?" Quentin muttered, and he didn't object when Eliot put an arm around him and pulled him in close, or when he led Quentin through Castle Whitespire to his bedroom and dismissed all the servants. Fen and Margo were still away with the fairies, like, literally, so he and Eliot had the enormous bed to themselves.

Quentin, brain working overtime, let Eliot undress him and push him under the covers. He nestled into the quilts, thinking about where else the cards might take them. "It's pretty amazing," he told Eliot as Eliot pulled him close. "We could go anywhere, well, anywhere in the cards."

"You're very cute when you're all wide-eyed about magic," Eliot said. "Irresistible, really."

"Oh!" Quentin said, as the evidence for his irresistibility pressed hard into his hip. "You're... you want to? Again?"

"My refractory period isn't _that_ long," Eliot said.

"Um, it's only been ten minutes for me," Quentin said, "so I might not be able to–"

"Just lie back and think of Fillory," Eliot murmured.

~~o0o~~

"God, I wish they grew tobacco here," Eliot groaned afterward, stretching luxuriously then pulling Quentin in to curl against him, his head on Eliot's shoulder. "I miss smoking after sex."

Quentin's brain was gradually coming back on line. "Aren't there, like, magic mushrooms or something?"

Eliot snorted. "Sure, if you want to turn into a ferret. How did you think the talking animals got here?"

Quentin lifted his head and peered up at him, brows furrowed. "You're joking, right? Eliot?"

Eliot smirked. "Magic's slippery, Q, and I don't entirely trust this portal thing. Also, I fucking hate being the one left behind. I loathe waiting. I was always the one doing the leaving, before."

"Yeah, waiting sucks," Quentin agreed. "Sorry." Eliot chivied him onto his side, spooning behind him, and Quentin relaxed back.

He thought about what Eliot had said. Home. It wasn't, though, that was the thing. Fillory was magic—it was beauty and terror and adventure. It had been his bolt-hole from reality since he was a kid, but it wasn't home. Eliot had Fen and Margo here, and Idri, sometimes, and it was full of gossiping servants and courtiers, which was, frankly, Quentin's worst nightmare. No, that was an exaggeration, given the real nightmares they'd seen, and fought, and killed and been killed by. He shivered, and Eliot slid his arm around him and squeezed.

"You okay, baby?"

"Yeah, I'm…" Quentin sighed. "I just. I wish we had our own place that was just ours, y'know?"

Eliot nuzzled his hair. "Mmmm?"

"I mean, just the two of us. Not a castle full of servants, or—I mean Brakebills, even. It's the closest to home I ever had. But even there, I'm…  And all the teachers and students. You know?"

"I know," Eliot said soothingly, and Quentin felt annoyed for a moment, like he was being patronized. Then Eliot said, "You want a love nest. A hideaway."

"I… I _do_ ," Quentin said. "I really, _really_ do." He twisted around to squint at Eliot. "For us. Just for you and me, no one else." That was what home meant, for him. People. It had been Julia when he was younger, then Alice for a while, and now Eliot.

Eliot yawned hugely. "Bound to be a hunting lodge around here I can commandeer for our own _Petit Trianon_. We can play at being shepherds—you'd look good in petticoats."

"Would not," Quentin muttered. Eliot snored softly in response.

He worried away at the problem for a while, Eliot snuffling quietly beside him. Quentin wanted something better for them than an abandoned cottage full of spiders, or a drafty hunting lodge. He even thought he knew how to get it.

He fell asleep with a smile on his lips.

~~o0o~~

"What in the name of Umber is _that_ supposed to be?"

Quentin flushed. He knew he was crap at art; Eliot didn't have to rub it in. "It's a picture of a house. A home."

"Hmm," Eliot said dubiously, picking up the piece of parchment on which Quentin had drawn a rectangular frame, filled with a shaky drawing of a house not much above the stick figure level of competence. "Dare I ask why the sudden artistic urge?"

"It's…" Quentin deflated. "I wanted it to be a surprise but I can't get it to look right. It's, um, it's supposed to be our hideaway."

"Oh," Eliot said, looking faintly guilty. "Oops. I was going to find us something." He rubbed his head tiredly. "It's just with Margo still away and having to sully myself with remedial agriculture…"

Quentin grabbed his hand and tugged him down to sit on the bed. "No, hey, you're trying to, like, run a kingdom and I'm, well," he waved at the drawing, "kind of obsessed with the portals, so not helping. I mean, I'm a king, too, but I was cut off for ages and I don't really know what I'm supposed to... I don't know how things _work_ around here. I tried to deal with a dispute yesterday morning to let you sleep in. It was about who owned a goat and I ended up explaining the judgement of Solomon to these two farmers." Quentin sighed. "They weren't impressed."

Eliot leaned over and kissed him on the head. "You're helping by being here, although I know you can't stay."

Quentin shrugged unhappily. "Yeah, I gotta get back to Earth, you know. Stuff to do. Classes and shit, and the others could be in trouble again. There's always _something_." He grimaced, then waved a hand at the parchment. "But I figured, maybe we can, um, finesse the time difference thing. Make a place we can both go that's kind of, like, outside the rules."

Eliot peered at the drawing and raised an eyebrow. "You expect me to live _there_?"

Quentin screwed up his face. "Not _all_ the time. Just, for a break. Time out."

"Time out of time? Also I'm still stuck in Fillory, Q. Even if I didn't have Margo and Fen and–"

"Yeah, but, I've got a theory," Quentin broke in, peering at Eliot intensely, words tumbling out as he tried to explain it. "If we make the card for the hideaway here, in Fillory, then it _will_ be part of Fillory, just, an offshoot. A halfway house."

"Jesus." Eliot ran a hand over his stubbled jaw. "Remedial agriculture and a halfway house. And I thought magic was supposed to be cool."

"It'll be cool," Quentin promised, taking his hand. "It'll be as cool as a, um, an extremely chilled thing." He glared at the wobbly drawing. "Just, I'm no good at art, and the card's gotta be more real than this, or we won't be able to visualize it." He stared despondently at the badly drawn card. "I enchanted the parchment and everything."

"Oh for heaven's sake, give it here," Eliot said, reaching for Quentin's attempt at a card. He examined it, turning it this way and that. "There's enough room here for a second attempt, and luckily, I happen to be endowed with considerable artistic talent."

"You, um, really?" Quentin asked. "Huh. But you never, I mean I never saw you painting, or, like sculpting, or whatever."

Eliot shrugged. "I decided early on that starving in an attic breathing turpentine was very much _not_ for me." He gestured with the parchment. "So, I made my whole life a work of art."

Quentin stared at him, bug-eyed, then fell over sideways on the bed, snorting with laughter. Eliot whacked him with the magical parchment, his mouth twitching. "Philistine."

~~o0o~~

It took another couple of days, what with Eliot having to tour the irrigation system he'd designed and ordered to be built. He made Quentin accompany him, crown and all. "They've been working very hard and it cheers them to see some royal faces."

"I thought you said you threatened them with the Death of Rats to get them to do it?" Quentin said, waving from the carriage as they passed another cluster of raggedly cheering ditch diggers hefting shovels.

"Merely a little encouragement," Eliot said. "There's no way I'd _actually_ sic the Death of Rats on them. I'm still not sure how many of the rats around here used to be courtiers."

"Yeah, and what with the Death of Rats being fictional," Quentin said, as they rattled past a partly built windmill-driven pumping station.

" _Fillory's_ fictional, so I wouldn't be too sure about that," Eliot said darkly.

Eliot showed him the completed card the next evening. "I got the paints from the librarian in charge of illustrated manuscripts," he explained.

"Oh wow. _Wow_ ," Quentin breathed, staring at the card, now trimmed to its proper shape and with a neat black border. The title was below the picture: "The Haven". Above, a cosy, rustic house perched on a cliffside, with a sturdy wooden balcony overlooking the ocean. Smoke wafted from a chimney and gulls wheeled above. A flagstone path curved from the house toward the viewer and lights glowed in the windows. On the grassy lawn in the foreground, a clock lay broken, its hands unmoving. In the far distance, across the sea, the skyline of New York was just visible as though through a veil. "El, it's amazing. I want to be there now."

"Yes, that's the idea. You'll have to test drive it, make sure it's . . . well, that it's _there_. You've had more practice with portals, and we'd better make sure it works at all, before I see if Fillory'll let me go there. If it really _is_ a halfway house."

"Okay," Quentin said, his heart beating a little faster. He reached out and put the card safely on the night stand. "One for the road?" he asked hopefully, looking up at Eliot through his eyelashes.

"C'mere," Eliot half-growled. "You flirtatious–" Then his mouth was on Quentin's and Quentin pulled him down into the bed, smiling into the kiss.

~~o0o~~

The view was breathtaking. Quentin stood on the clifftop and stared at the sunset, then ducked as a gull with the shits passed overhead. Very idyllic.

He pushed open the door to the house. Inside, there was a lot of polished wood in the hallway and a rug in deep reds, blues and greens. His spirits lifted; it looked welcoming. The kitchen was a disappointment though, pretty much at the level of technology he imagined Whitespire's to be, although he'd never set foot in there. There was an old iron stove with a big, blackened kettle on the top and a basket of wood alongside. Quentin eyed the kettle doubtfully—Eliot wasn't going to be happy roughing it without servants to handle the primitive details of day-to-day life. There was no refrigerator, but maybe they could do a localized weather spell and use one of the cupboards as an ice-box. He twisted a brass tap above the sink, relieved when water flowed, although he had no idea where it was coming from. Whitespire did have plumbing, of course, although the taps were antique-looking, like this one.

He wandered on, finding a spacious living room with tall windows facing the ocean and a broad, cushioned window-seat. More of the polished wood and jewel-colored rugs, and brass lamps with painted or etched glass shades on a few tables.

He turned, his breath catching. The back wall was all bookshelves, filled with hardbacks and paperbacks, some of them antique texts on magic he'd been meaning to read for ages. He pulled out a copy of Arnstead and Burkitt's _Signs, Symbols and Portents_ and began leafing through it, then made himself put it back, fingers caressing the leather-bound spine as he shelved it. There were modern books as well—fantasy and science fiction, the collected volumes of Gaiman's _Sandman_ series, Tolkien and Sturgeon, Iain M. Banks and Bruce Sterling, and all Pratchett's _Discworld_  novels. He squatted to check the lowest shelf, which had nothing but agricultural books on topics like animal husbandry, beekeeping and crop rotation. Quentin snorted—Eliot was going to love _those_.

He moved away, finding a long, leather-covered couch and two matching armchairs facing a fireplace. A thick, soft rug spread before them, in front of the fire. Quentin rolled his eyes at himself.

The bedroom was, of course, dominated by an enormous bed made up with what felt like at least 500 thread-count sheets and a quilt filled with goose down. Quentin checked the drawer in the nightstand. Lube and a worryingly large, lifelike dildo. He swallowed and backed out.

In the living room again, Quentin took stock. Oh, wait, the bathroom. He hunted about, but other than a china basin with a jug inside it on a side-table in the bedroom, there didn't seem to be one. He'd certainly seen Eliot in a big enameled bath in Fillory, filled with hot water toted by a series of servants. That wasn't going to work so well here, and he couldn't find even a small tin bath anywhere.

It was still light outside, the last rays of the sun shining through scattered clouds, so he went out to poke around. The bath was around the side of the house, an old cast iron monster on clawed feet, raised up on blocks with a brass tap jutting out from the wall of the house that produced cold, clear water when Quentin turned it. Come to think of it, there was no hot water in the house at all; the kettle was going to get a _lot_ of use. Another heap of split firewood was stacked under the bath, so Quentin figured that was how it was heated. He straightened, pushing the hair back from his face, and looked around. The view was amazing, so maybe he could sell it to Eliot as romantic—the bath was certainly big enough for two, even with Eliot's long legs.

He went back into the house, figuring they'd mostly leave from there so he might as well test it out now. In the hallway he noticed another wooden door, which led down some rough stairs into darkness. A cellar. There was a candle in a holder on the hall table, so he lit it with a quick pulse of fire magic and made his way carefully down the dusty steps. The air was noticeably cooler down here, and shelves held a few wheels of cheese, with salamis and a smoked ham hanging above. There were bins of potatoes and ropes of onions and garlic, bunches of dried herbs, sacks of flour and beans, and bags of spices. Quentin wondered if the work of art that was Eliot's life included gourmet cooking. All Quentin could manage was mac 'n cheese and ramen.

Beyond the larder, racks of dusty wine bottles stretched away. Quentin sure as hell hoped his imagination had come up with some good vintages, but he was more of a soda guy. Well, if it was undrinkable they could always bring cocktail fixings.

Back in the living room, he took out the Times Square cards. New York first, then back here again to test it. Then Fillory.

He glanced one more time at the tempting wall of books, then turned back to the card and concentrated.

~~o0o~~

"No, seriously," Eliot called. Quentin could hear him cursing as he manhandled the kettle off the stove so as to make coffee with the French press he'd insisted on bringing, along with a sack of freshly ground beans. He emerged from the kitchen bearing a tray with the press and two mugs. "I'm gonna draw some electric power lines on the damn card, or maybe a generator shed."

"I kind of like it the way it is," Quentin said, accepting a mug. "It's quaint."

Eliot snorted derisively. "You're barely civilized yourself, Q, so you can take the quaint lack of a microwave or a fridge, or for fuck's sake, basic necessities like an espresso machine, or _hot water_ and stick it–"

Quentin held up a warning finger, not looking up from Arnstead and Burkitt as he sipped his coffee. "My ass has had enough of a workout, thanks, without sticking anything else up it."

Eliot smirked, mollified, and settled down at the other end of the window seat, twining his long legs with Quentin's and trying to push his feet under Quentin's ass to warm them up. "Sorry, sweetheart, but you enjoyed it at the time."

Quentin felt himself blushing, which was _so_ unfair. It wasn't like he had any secrets from El, so it was only his own uncool inner geek getting embarrassed. "Yes, um. Heat of the moment, y'know. I just–"

Eliot took Quentin's mug and set it on a nearby low table alongside his own, then crawled up his body.  "So fucking gorgeous when you blush, baby, I can't resist you."

He took Quentin's face in his hands and kissed him lightly. Quentin breathed faster, and licked his lips. Eliot was in a t-shirt and sweats, striped socks on his feet. No crown, no regalia. He looked more relaxed than Quentin had ever seen him, even at Brakebills where he'd always been playing a part—the role of Eliot Waugh.

"You look good," Quentin blurted. He bit his lip. "I mean, you look... happy." Eliot kissed him again, with more tongue, and he moaned.

"Looking pretty damn good yourself, Q," Eliot said hoarsely, when they'd come up for air. "Positively _edible_."

"Oh," Quentin said, his eyes widening. "Can we have that bean soup thing again tonight?"

"Cassoulet?" Eliot raised an eyebrow. "Sure, there's plenty left in the cold-cupboard." He pushed Quentin down into the cushions. "But first, I want an appetizer."

For a moment, Quentin was about to smirk and say _Yes, your majesty_ , or _Your wish is my command,_ the usual snarky backchat, but the High King was for Whitespire, just as the ultra-cool mixologist was for Brakebills. This wasn't either of those places. It was The Haven.

"Yeah, El, yes," Quentin said. "Appetize me. Um, I mean–"

"Oh for fuck's sake," Eliot said fondly, and did.

 

~ the end~

 

 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic of] In the Cards](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19759519) by [exmanhater](https://archiveofourown.org/users/exmanhater/pseuds/exmanhater)




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